retro science porn, art, martin frobenius ledermüller, microscopy, monsters, science

Eighteenth Century Microscope Monsters

Europeans learned about the wonders of the microscopic world from drawings like this one, created by amateur microscope enthusiast Martin Frobenius Ledermüller in the 1760s. He put bugs, plants, and crystals under the microscope and produced fascinating, highly-symmetrical renderings of what he saw. We've got some etchings much weirder and more alien than this fly below.

I'm not sure what this is, but it looks like something out of Lovecraft.

The results of Ledermüller's work were collected into a three-volume set that would have been the eighteenth century equivalent of coffee table books. All three have recently been put online, and you can browse through them for free. Here are two pictures of plant life. The top one shows seeds sprouting, and the bottom shows mushrooms.

If you want to see more, check out the three volume set: Volume One (click "see digitalized document"), Volume Two, and Volume Three.

Recreational Microscopy [via BibliOdyssey]

7:00 AM on Mon Mar 31 2008
By Annalee Newitz
1,778 views
12 comments

Comments

braak at 07:07 AM on 03/31/08
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That first one looks like a hydra trying to eat some kind of small worm.
BlindKarma at 07:12 AM on 03/31/08
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Yeah it's a Hydra with a nematoad maybe?
braak at 07:18 AM on 03/31/08
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@BlindKarma: I don't know. The worm looks like it's got cilia along the sides, which I think is uncharacteristic of nematode worms.
NefariousNewt at 07:31 AM on 03/31/08
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@braak: It might be a pin-worm or hookworm, from the segmentation of the body.
SanskritiCynortas at 08:19 AM on 03/31/08
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Comment on Eighteenth Century Microscope Monsters How on earth can this be newsworthy on the sci-fi news blog, when you can find a clear historical precedent in Robert Hooke's Micrographia - published one hundred years before these prints! Not only that, but Hooke was a character in Stephenson's "System of the World" trilogy.
braak at 08:22 AM on 03/31/08
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@NefariousNewt: Maybe, but those cilia are still out of order.

Also, if you feel like you had maybe too much lunch today, and want to get some out of your stomach? Do a google image search for "hookworm."
Slothrop at 08:26 AM on 03/31/08
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Robert Hooke's microscope work is talked about at length in the recent popular biographies:

[www.amazon.com]

and, of course, he's in The Baroque Cycle which makes him super cool.
Ghede at 08:42 AM on 03/31/08
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@braak: See, this is why I love this site. A discussion on the classification of microscopic organisms based on eighteenth century drawings.
I voted for Kodos at 12:17 PM on 03/31/08
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Those aren't seeds sprouting, those look like some kind of plankton to me. And technically, fungi are not plants.
botanicidal at 04:53 PM on 03/31/08
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@IgG4:

agreed... the fact that people nowadays are still referring to fungi as plants makes me think that many people were NOT paying attention in Biology class during High school. Plants clearly belong in Kingdom, Plantae and Fungi clearly belong in Kingdom, Fungi, which are distinct from the Kingdoms, Animalia, Protist, Eubacteria, and Archaebacteria. This classification system has been around for decades now.
cde at 07:36 PM on 03/31/08
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@IgG4:
@botanicidal:

It's alot more complicated then that: [en.wikipedia.org]
physik at 04:33 AM on 04/01/08
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I love this site. When I start to feel like I am too dorky you guys have an argument about kingdom classification. Nice.